


To Boris, From Boris

by trashmovthtoziers



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, Emotionally Repressed, Internalized Homophobia, Las Vegas, M/M, POV First Person, Pining, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, boris and theo deserve better ;(, lots of hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-02 05:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashmovthtoziers/pseuds/trashmovthtoziers
Summary: Boris writes a letter/memoir about one of the Vegas nights that Theo failed to remember.





	To Boris, From Boris

**Author's Note:**

> i was really debating whether or not i should post this. writing first person from boris was close to impossible, but i wanted to really challenge myself as a writer. i've always loved to see things from different perspectives, and though this scene doesn't canonically happen, i wanted to see it through boris' eyes.
> 
> i tried to dumb down how i usually write so that it would sound a little more authentic but simultaneously tried to make sure it didn't sound like it was written by a ten year old. boris is smart, all right? he was in honors english for a reason????

I have never written one of these before — not like Potter has. I spent a solid five minutes debating whether or not if I should write in Russian or Polish or something, but then I decided to write in English for some extra practice.  
  
I am not very good at English, or so much my teacher says, but speaking it has always been easier for me. I was put into Honors English for some strange reason, shoved into there with all the other smart kids like Potter and that weird horse-teethed girl that raised her hand with an answer to every single question. I wish my teacher would let me do speaking essays like some of the others do to the foreign kids who, just as me, have trouble writing. Even in speaking, I am not that great.  
  
Potter says that I forget words like ‘it’, ‘a’, and ‘the’ and it makes me sound uneducated, but I told him that those were filler words, really unnecessary. We don’t need those in Slavic languages. (He also says that I should use contractions more because that is what Americans do. I think they sound strange). “You can understand me, yes?” I asked him. He nodded. “Why would I need to say them then?”  
  
I stole the idea of writing this from Potter. He writes many letters, all to either his mom or that ‘Pippa’ girl he talks about sometimes. I did not know who to write this letter to because I do not know many people, so I did not address it to anyone. It is to myself, for myself, and no one else. After this, I went up and wrote ‘To Boris’ at the top, because it is. To me.  
  
I know Potter writes these letters because I find them sometimes when I am going through his things. It is something we do. I look through his things and he through mine. We share things we steal, or get.  
  
I never <strike>reed</strike> read the letters when I find them, even if I want to so badly. I did <strike>reed</strike> read the first one, though, but I could not have helped myself. I found it in his backpack about a week after I met him. I was going to put it down, forget about it. It had sounded sad and it was not of much interest to me, but then I saw my name there, and I had to <strike>reed</strike> read it.  
  
It was just as I thought, this one, only about the things we did that day — stolen steaks from the market and bought milk with them so that it would not look shady (A new word! It is like suspicious). Still, <strike>reeding</strike> reading something Potter had <strike>wrote</strike> written specifically for his mom had given me guilt. After that, every time I saw another letter, I did not <strike>reed</strike> read it. It was becoming hard because I kept finding them so much, stuffed in his locker, falling out of his textbooks, laying out on his desk next to stubbed-out cigarette butts and empty bottles.  
  
This is a letter that I hope that he does not find. If he finds this, I hope that, just as me, he will not <strike>reed</strike> read it for my privacy. It is late at night (early in the morning?) and I am still awake. Potter is asleep, half of his body hanging off the bed. Popchyk is between us, snoring as softly as a feather. Earlier, we did a few bumps of the new mix I got. It hit Potter harder than me, I think, because he was acting strange after it.  
  
We did it at the playground like we usually do when we experiment things. I was not really sure what was in it, but I knew that if I did it with Potter, the same amount, I would not feel bad if I killed him because I would be dead too. I used a small dose because of this.  
  
We were <strike>laying</strike> lying on the mulch (is that the word?), looking up at the sky. I know some sort of halluc<strike>eno</strike>inogenic was in the mix because the stars were making weird shapes and pictures. At first, we were laughing with each other and at nothing, goofing around and talking about who-knows-what. Eventually, as the night went on, the mix started to do different stuff to us.  
  
Potter was quiet for a long time. I was talking about something, I do not remember what it was now, but I do know remember the gist of it, something about Ukraine.  
  
“So I am only a kid, little _Russki_ boy, and I am seeing all these sketchy things on street. Shady things. Deals in back alleys. I am hearing of mafia stories. Famous Ukrainian families in upper mafia. Scary stuff. I hear of _vbyvstva_, murders, in plain day, but I do not see any myself, thankfully. I am glad to be out of Ukraine, really. If I had not escaped, bad things would’ve happened to me, I am sure of it. I was—”  
  
“Boris,” Potter said suddenly. I shut up.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m spiraling,” he said. I had no clue what that meant. I looked over at him, confused. He caught my eye in a side-long glance, shaking his head. “It means that whatever was in that shit is fucking me up. Jesus.” He turned his eyes back up to the sky. “What about you? You feeling this?”  
  
My whole body was numb. “Am fucked up, too. Just hope those were not bad drugs, you know? I hate bad drugs. What even is purpose of them? Kill off clients? Moneys flow? I swear, if we die because of this I will haunt that dealer” —I cursed in Russian. I’d forgotten his name— “whats-his-name. He is dead to me. He is on my bad list, and that is place you do not want to be.”  
  
“No, seriously, Boris. Do you have any idea what was in that?” He did not sound mad, only distant. His voice was far-away even though he was laying right beside me. I could have reached out and touched him. I didn’t, though. I stared up at the sky. I felt adrift, almost, unmoored. Like a sailor resting with one eye open, keeping his senses attuned to the sky. Was a storm coming?  
  
“Not really,” I admitted. “Guy said it was like pain-killer, Vicodin, and would make me feel like flying. He was right. Am flying. Soaring.”  
  
“There is definitely more than Vicodin in this.”  
  
We’d snorted Vicodin before, sitting cross-legged at Potter’s kitchen table, but it hadn’t hit like this. I shrugged. It didn’t really matter that much to me. We weren’t dead yet.

“Seriously, Boris. I don’t like what this is doing to me.” His voice was swimming in and out of my ears. I wasn’t sure if it was just my ears playing with me, the drugs, or what, but he sounded troubled, his voice shaking. “Oh, _God_.” He sat up suddenly, holding his head.  
  
The sky was bleeding, the stars were dripping. I pushed myself up beside him, rubbing the illusion from my eyes. “What, Potter? Are you okay?”  
  
“I’m fine,” he said, but he didn’t sound it. He was massaging his temples. “I just— I need a minute to think.” He didn’t look very good. He dragged himself onto his feet, stumbling toward the deserted playset a few meters away.  
  
I sat there on the mulch(?), watching him stagger across the playground in the semi-darkness. Then, realizing how badly this could turn out, I went after him. You were not supposed to go moving around after the first hit, especially when you aren’t really sure what it is. “What are you doing? Come sit down, Potter! We are not supposed to do this until we feel the high!” I was wobbly on my feet too, only able to walk several feet before I had to stop and catch my balance. The metal of the playset was hot to the touch even in the moments before the sun set.  
  
Through the roaring ocean in my ears I thought I could hear him say, _“I’m feeling the high, Boris!”_ but it could’ve just been what I’d imagined he’d said. He was feeling his way around the exterior of the playset, moving, at least to me, in a reddish blur. I blinked a few times and he went back to normal.  
  
“Come on, Potter, do not do this right now,” I pleaded. I was getting desperate. He had gotten himself hurt at the start of a high plenty of times before (a broken glass story for another time), and, even in my doped-up haze, I was trying to make sure that he didn’t get hurt again. “We can sit on ground and drink our vodka. Or if you don’t want to, we can just wait out the high. Go swimming at your house! It will sober us right up! _Szybki_!” Hurry!  
  
“_Angliyskiy_,” I heard him say. I wanted to tell him that I had spoken in Polish, not Russian, but I didn’t think it would matter too much. Sighing, he collapsed onto one of the slides.

The plastic must have been burning his back even in the semi-darkness, but it didn’t look like he cared enough to react to it. He was looking up at the sky, not at me, his eyes unfocused. I lowered myself onto the other slide beside him.  
  
We sat there in silence for a minute, doing nothing. He was breathing heavily through his nose, massaging his temples. Peering over the edge of the slide, I saw that he was pale-faced. “Am serious,” I said. “Very. You okay, Potter?”  
  
He turned his head to look at me over the lip of the slide. “My mom,” is all he said for a moment, then… “I miss her so much it’s going to kill me.” He sounded small (he _was_ small!), but in the emotional sense. I had heard this spiel many times.  
  
“What do you mean, kill you?”  
  
“If I hadn’t gotten suspended, we never would’ve gone into the museum. I would’ve gone to school like normal and she would've gone to work.”  
  
I’d heard the story before, multiple times. He blamed himself for her death. It was a common thing, I knew, for people to blame themselves for things they had been involved in, even if they had no control over it. I had a great deal of it for myself, but I’d learned to get over it. Ukraine always brought up bad memories. I could still remember the face of that man. I had the scar over my eye to prove it.  
  
I cut him off. “Potter, I already know all this. You blame yourself for something you had no control over. Nothing. Is stupid and—”  
  
“No, it isn’t!” he insisted. Then, through a sigh, he whispered, “It should’ve been me.”  
  
Startled, I sat up on the slide, looking down at him. “What?”  
  
“It should’ve been me,” he said again, louder this time and with more certainty. He seemed to consider this for another moment before he repeated again, “It should’ve been me.”  
  
“God, Potter, you have got to stop blaming yourself. Is wrong,” I said. I tried to meet his eyes, but he wouldn’t look at me. I nudged his foot with mine, hoping to get his attention. He didn’t respond. He was still looking up, hypnotized by the sky.  
  
Sighing, I shuffled over to him. I stood right in front of him, hovering, blocking his sight. Only then did his eyes move. His pupils were blown out and I’m sure mine were too.  
  
“I know you hear this all the time, but… You. Did. Not. Kill her. No one could’ve known what was going to happen.” _Except the terrorists, maybe._  
  
I never figured out who was behind it. When Potter had told me his mom had been killed in “The Bombing” it took me a while to put two-and-two together. The Met. The bombing in New York City. I had heard about it on the weathers. Potter had told me the whole story shortly after we met, about how he had been suspended, it had started to rain, and how he and his mom had gone into the museum to see some Dutch painting exhibit.  
  
He told me about what it felt like to wake up after the explosion. The tinnitus, the thick dust. We were drunk, both of us, but hearing him talk so strong and serious had sobered me up. He told me how fuzzy his mind was, that he had gone home and waited for her only for her not to show.  
  
He blinked a few times, the only sign that he was still breathing.  
  
“_Vstavay_! Get up!" —nudging his foot with mine— “We can go back to your house. See Popchyk. Drink some water. Watch television. Go to sleep.” I was desperate. Potter looked so sad, lying there on the slide in the dark, his pupils blown and his face flushed with the vodka we had chased our bumps with.  
  
He said nothing. Did nothing. He showed no signs of hearing me. I could tell that he was lost in his head, going deeper into it with every passing second.  
  
“Come on, _pozhaluysta_, Potter!” Please! “Am serious!” Having had no other choice, I grabbed him by the collar of his sweater and pulled him up onto his feet. He stumbled, broken out of his trance, cursing me under his breath.  
  
“You can’t just do that, you motherfucker!” he bit out sharply.  
  
I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty for having given him the exotic drug. I had done the same amount as him and didn’t feel like throwing up or anything. It felt a little like Vicodin, which I had lots of experience with, cranked up a few notches.  
  
I felt as if I had done about six lines when I had only done two. The world was spinning a bit, off-kilter and lop-sided. “Am sorry. Really. Will kill the dealer once I get sober enough to remember his name. Force him to give us our moneys back.”  
  
“I don’t care about our money, Boris.” He fumbled for something to keep his drunken balance. It just so happened to be my arm. “Fuck our money. It’s gone.”  
  
“But I can get it back,” I insisted. I didn’t really know if I could for sure, but it felt good to reassure him. It reassured me, too. “We can exchange for something else. Another drug or—“  
  
He cut me off with a groan. “No more drugs. Not right now, at least.”  
  
As if to say Right, Potter, of course, I nodded vigorously. “Okay, if you don’t want drugs I won’t get them for you. We can talk about something to do once we get you back home.” He was leaning onto me heavily, favoring me with his weight. “You sure you are okay, Potter?”  
  
Dizzily, he found my eyes, looking over at me now and not at the ground. “Yeah, ‘m fine,” he said dismissively.  
  
“Sure,” I said, not believing it one bit. “And sky is purple. Now let’s go…” I grabbed his hand and started to pull him away from the playground. The sun was setting for real now, dipping low below the horizon-line. In Vegas you could see far out into the desert — you could see the moment the sun dove underneath the earth. The strange, mutated Vicodin drug made everything hazy and over-saturated. Both of us were stumbling now, dragging our feet across the dusty tarmac streets, burning holes into our shoes.  
  
We didn’t drop hands until we reached Potter’s house. I don’t remember much of the walk, only that our palms were slick with sweat. We didn’t drop hands that whole time, though, keeping hold of each other so that we wouldn’t drift away into drugged-up realities.  
  
Both Larry and Xandra’s cars were gone, thankfully, which meant that we had the house essentially to ourselves. Popchyk greeted us at the door like he always did, running in circles around our ankles. I didn’t stoop down to greet him until I had dragged Potter up the stairs and into his bed. As I patted Popchyk’s head, I kept an eye on Potter as he lay there on top of his covers, staring at nothing.  
  
Giving Popchyk one final belly-rub, I went up and sat beside Potter. “You want anything?” I asked. “An Advil? Some more vodka? Is about all I can give you. Is all I have, really.”  
  
He shook his head. “Just lie down, Boris,” he said through a sigh. Willingly, I did as he asked, crawling onto the bed beside him. Popchyk readied his legs, low on his haunches, and jumped up after me, chasing his tail several times before he settled down at our feet.  
  
I got under the covers and turned over onto my side, careful not to kick Popchyk off. Potter did the same, turning to face me as well. He took off his glasses and put them onto the table, nuzzling into the covers.  
  
Finally (and foggily, I’m guessing), he met my eyes in the dark. He was blinking slowly, eyes unfocused, lips parted ever-so-slightly. He could barely keep his eyes open, but it looked like he was fighting against sleep, trying to stay awake and just look. “S’not your fault you fucked up the deal.” His speech was drunken and slurred.  
  
“S’not your fault about the museum,” I replied, just about as plastered as he was. “Believe me.”  
  
“I _do_ believe you, Boris,” he whispered. “But I can’t convince myself that.”  
  
“Let me do it then.” I reached out for what I hoped was one of his hands, clasped in-between us. “Was. Not. Your. Fault. What. Happened.”  
  
I felt his grip tighten as I said each word. It was almost vice-like by the time that I finished. I could tell that he was starting to believe me, but I could also tell that, by morning, he would forget and begin to convince himself what he had believed before. It was enough for now, though, because I could see, just barely, the glint of his white teeth in the dark— a small smile.  
  
“Okay…” I felt his grip slacken, but the warmth of his hand never left mine. His eyelids fluttered closed and I watched for several moments more before I let sleep take me as well.  
  
My dreams were tampered by the drug, overly-bright and saturated. In one, Potter and I were walking through a museum. This one, I figured, was not like the one that had ruined Potter's life, torn him apart from his mother in an explosion of dust and plaster, but a different one.  
  
There were brightly colored tapestries on the walls, stretching from floor to ceiling. The tapestries on the right side of the exhibit were warm colors, reds and oranges and yellows, and on the other side were cool colors, blues and greens and violets. The floor and ceiling were both a shimmering white marble, glistening with thousands of little crystal particles. I had never been in a place so beautiful.

Toward the back of the exhibit, at the end of the long hallway, I could see a single painting on a small canvas not any larger than a textbook. We were walking toward it in a slow, leisurely pace, taking everything in. The painting was flooded with light, displayed for all to see on a pedestal. The picture itself was rather simple — a small bird shackled onto its perch.

This little bird was looking directly at me. I could see the black of its eyes. After several moments of watching it, entranced by it, I realized that it had started to move. It was tugging on its chain, trying desperately to fly away, out of the painting and into the world. Seeing it there, struggling so hopelessly to be freed, was enough to bring tears to my eyes.  
  
Beside me, Potter was looking at the little bird with a blank, unreadable expression. Still, it fought against its chain, fluttering only a few inches above its post before it had to stop and come back down. It hurt me so much that I had to look away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bright neon yellow bag on the ground beside our feet, unzipped and empty. _Potter._  
  
Then, I floated into my next doped-up dream.


End file.
